Castle Maps

[barocca]

using the same procedure outlined above you will also need to make the following sets

Fortress - - - - - - - - Citadel - - - - - - - - and Citadel Upgrade
castleflat01_6_0.jjm, castleflat01_7_0.jjm and castleflat01_7_1.jjm

[Noir]

Post now edited out... Please see below:

[Noir]

These are a few pictures i took of Kumamoto Castle, while in Japan. Kumamoto-jo was built originally by the Kato clan and handed over to the Hosokawa clan later on. It is unlikely that it is representative of the hundreds of fortifications that were standing guarding every pass of importance during the period of civil wars; however it does give a good idea of Japanese castles, as it is one of the three largest that stand at the moment (the other two being Himeji castle and Osaka castle).
The main keep has been reconstructed in the 1960's to detail with a reinforced concrete frame (wood for such purposes is extremely expensive and further more there's the issue of public safety during earthquakes i guess).

Kumamoto castle is most famous for being the locus of the infamous Satsuma rebellion, during the Meiji restoration, that was the main theme of the movie "The last Samurai".

The inside of the castle serves as a museum, with many items of interest.

The castle being residence of Hosokawa (of Higo) lords and their armour is presented here as it was exhibited inside the museum.

You'll also notice a crowd dressed in samurai gear, that was due to a festival at the time of my visit.

1. Castle Main Gate (guarded!)


2. Moat

[Noir]

3. Main Keep - notice the slopping of the walls that gradually becomes vertical all the way to the top. This was to deter ninjas from climbing to it.


4. Twin Secondary Keep (next to the one shown above)


5.Samurai! Here you can clearly see the zig zag pattern of the walls that lead to the castle as they provide more shooting perimeter to the defenders and slow down enemy charges at the same time.


6.Anti-ninja device - the guide explained that those sticks were "pressure sensitive" and that they would eject to skewer any intruder.


7.Castle Grounds model (as it was "then") - it is slightly misleading as it is difficult to realise the sheer scale of the grounds. After careful watching one realises that almost everything past the river is "castle grounds". Notice also the huge external moats at the gates as well as the way they've followed the river with a wall. The main keep has its own ring of walls that provides protection to the lord. The gate showed in pict 1 is infact the gate of the main keep as the rest of the grounds was given to the city past the feudal period.


8.Castle Grounds model (detail)


9.Model of the timber structure


10. Hosokawa Daimyo armour


11.Princess' Palanquin


These last two pictures are from the "Shogun" exhibition, that took place in the Royal Armouries museum, Leeds, UK, for three months in the summer of 2005. It was an incredible experience, and i was very fortunate to manage to visit it. My japanese friends said that "all Samurai items were gone from Japan" during that summer. The Leeds Royal Armouries was requesting the collection from Japanese Museums, Temples etc for 12 years!

12.Honda's famous horn kabuto and armour.


13.Tokugawa Ieyasu's warfan-standard

[Puzz3D]

Thanks Noir. Excellent pictures. I'm thinking that large maps might be best for castle maps since we go up to level 7 castles which will be quite large.

[Puzz3D]

Good news on some custom battle test with a castle on a large map. The AI keeps it's army out of range until a breach is made in the wall, and it works on more than one breach at a time. A lightly armored unit takes about 25% losses getting up to the wall, and a heavily armored unit about 10% losses when there is a moderately sloped approach and when under fire from the wall and two level 2 keeps used as towers. Once the wall is breached, the AI attacks with its army and supports this attack with archers firing at any defending units in the breach. The AI divides its forces to attack multiple breaches.

I've cut back on the strength of the castle structures by about 30%. It takes about 4.5 minutes for a unit to break down a wall. This time doesn't seem to be dependent of the type of unit that's attacking the wall, but is dependent on the number of men actually hitting the wall.

I've tested concentric ring designs and maze designs, but the AI pathfinding is hopeless.

[Puzz3D]

I've discovered a bug in MTW/VI v2.01 with regard to the firing arc of keeps and towers. These structures will only initiate shooting at targets that are within the 90 degree firing arc that faces the top of the map. Once the target is being actively fired upon, these structures will continue to fire at the target until it enters the 90 degree firing arc that faces the bottom of the map. Units that are within the 90 degree firing arc that faces the bottom of the map are never fired upon.

In view of this behavior and the fact that the AI never attacks keeps or towers, I'll be using non-shooting keeps and towers for the castles. I'll rely upon the 6 levels of walls that are defined to increase the firepower of the castles as they increase in level. I've already tested this, and it works fine with a citadel able to inflict between 300 and 500 casualties on an AI assaulting army using 60 man units. This firepower may have to be reduced if the AI doesn't assault citadels with sufficient forces in the campaign.

[Puzz3D]

I've got a preliminary set of seven castleflat01 maps finished, and renamed them to substitute for all three castle map sets used by the campaign. I can make this available for download if anyone wants to use it to test a campaign. Included would be a new model damage file as well.